How to Get Your Holiday Scheduling Right

With the holidays around the corner, it’s time to focus on your holiday scheduling. You need to be properly staffed through, what is often, the busiest time of the year. We live and breathe scheduling here at Homebase, so we’ve put together some of our top tips to keep your business running smoothly and full of holiday cheer.

During the winter holidays, holiday pay rates, communicating availability, and advanced time off requests all become that much more important. Whether you have a retail business that handles large crowds or a plumbing business that offers services every day of the year, knowing who can work the hours you need and including holiday pay rates in your forecasts will help you get ahead and keep your holiday scheduling stress free.

Make Expectations Clear

If you’re hiring seasonal employees or forecast that you’ll need employees to work more hours due to higher-than-usual foot traffic, make this clear as early as possible. Staying open a little later when shoppers are trying to get something for everyone on their list could boost sales. When your employees understand this, they will make those extra sales with a smile — as long as the extra hours don’t catch them off guard. Consider making one weekend shift required for all employees if you run a retail shop that is a neighborhood favorite for unique holiday gifts. Set a meeting before the holidays begin so that each employee understands the out-of-the-ordinary shifts that will become the norm for several weeks. And frame this temporary change as an increase in hours and pay, not as a loss of their non-work time. This will set the tone for the season and get everyone on the same page.

Set Availability in Advance

Holiday scheduling works best with a healthy dose of communication between employees and managers. One of the most important things to communicate is exactly who is working when. The earlier those hours are set, the better. Managers need to make schedules known with a bit more notice than at other times of year, and this means employees need to communicate their availability in advance, too. That way, employees can match up their work hours with other obligations they have. And many part time employees will jump at the opportunity for more hours if they’re given enough notice to plan for those shifts.

Advanced Notice of Time Off

Most of your employees will be spending the holidays with family and friends, so they should know what is expected of them at work in order to properly balance the two this holiday season. Family dinners, vacations, ice skating, you name it. There are a number of fun activities that your employees want to take part in this holiday season, and they are possible as long as they give you ample notice. When your staffing is off, there’s no way to make the most out of the holiday surge. Set a cut off date for any planned time off over the holidays. That way, you can plan around absences and make a strong schedule that successfully avoids last minute changes. This is especially easy to do with Homebase.

Holiday Pay Rates

Does your business need to stay open through the holidays? Homebase has a holiday pay feature that enables managers to set an hourly rate on a holiday, without needing to manually edit time cards before running payroll. For example, if you want to pay 1.5x for any work on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day, you can do so with a few clicks. You don’t want to start the year caught off guard when you do payroll.

The holidays are approaching quickly and planning your holiday scheduling strategy now will help give you peace of mind later in the season.

Angelica Valentine Angelica Valentine is a content strategist and champion for small businesses. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. When she isn't busy writing, this Oakland native can be found exploring music, food, and culture around the world.

Homebase makes managing hourly work easier for over 100,000 local businesses. With free employee scheduling, time tracking, team communication, and hiring, managers and employees can spend less time on paperwork and more time on growing their business.